William Heffernan - Red Angel

Pitts had pulled up at a stoplight. He turned in his seat. “Don’t fucking believe it for a minute. Old Bathrobe is the best fucking dago actor since Robert De Niro.”

Devlin thought about the not-so-veiled threat Rossi had made against his family. It was stupid, and Rossi wasn’t a stupid man. Maybe it was because he was dying, and felt he had nothing to lose. If so, it would make him even more dangerous.

“Too bad those two bodyguards had carry permits for their weapons,” Devlin said. “It would have been nice to lock their asses up, then drop a dime to the Columbo family that the Bathrobe was sitting there with only the Knife protecting him.”

Pitts let out a little cackle. He enjoyed that idea. Then he turned serious. “Hey, that’s another thing. I wanna know the name of the judge who approved those permits, and the name of the scumbag boss on The Job who let them slip through unchallenged. We find that out, we got two probables for Rossi’s pad.”

“It’s already on my list,” Devlin said. “I’ll have Stan Samuels digging into it before the day’s out.” He pointed a finger at Pitts. “And no cracks about Stan,” he warned.

Pitts called Samuels “the Mole,” because of his love of burrowing into long-forgotten records, a denigration of the very talent that made him an essential part of Devlin’s five-man team. Everyone on the squad had a nickname-the more derogatory of which had been coined by Pitts. Ramon Rivera, a self-proclaimed Latin love machine and Devlin’s computer expert, was called “Boom Boom.” Red Cunningham, a three-hundred-pound, baby-faced hulk who could plant a bug anywhere Devlin wanted one, was “Elephant Ass.” And Sharon Levy, a beautiful, redheaded lesbian sergeant, who was Devlin’s second in command and who ran the squad like a marine drill instructor, had become “Sergeant Muffdiver”-although even Pitts lacked the guts to say it to her face.

Pitts pulled up in front of the original Nathan’s Hot Dog Stand-still a Coney Island landmark-and glanced hungrily at the take-out counter. “You want something. A couple of dogs, maybe a knish?” he asked.

He watched Devlin shake his head. The man was tense; pissed off, Pitts thought. You could always tell when the scar on his cheek-the old knife wound Rossi had ragged him about-turned that warning shade of white. Except for the scar, he was a good-looking guy in a rugged sort of way, even more so now that a touch of gray had come to the temples of his wavy dark hair. There was also an easy gentleness about the guy. Nothing prissy, or namby-pamby, but definitely a feel that you could talk to the man. Except now it wasn’t there. Now his normally soft, blue eyes were simmering.

“The old bastard really got to you, didn’t he?”

Devlin continued to stare straight ahead. Then he drew a long breath and let it out slowly. “You turning into a shrink, Ollie?”

“Yeah, that’s me.” Pitts reached out and gave Devlin’s arm a squeeze. He left his hand there. It wasn’t cop-to-boss talk now. It was friend to friend. “He ain’t gonna do nothin’ to your family, Paul. I don’t think he’d even let anybody go after you if they were around. And I don’t think he’ll even try to have you whacked again. Remember, last time he had somebody else he could lay the blame on, and the way it turned out, he gotta know even that was a mistake.” Another squeeze. “Hey, maybe he is crazy, like you said, but he’s not that crazy. He went after your lady or your kid, it would bring so much heat down on all the families, they’d never fucking forgive him. Hell, the trouble he has now would seem like a fucking picnic. The other four families, they’d get together and kill his miserable old ass, and then they’d blow up his fucking grave.”

Devlin smiled in spite of himself, the tension broken. What Pitts was talking about had actually happened. Frank Costello, one of the mob’s more notorious bosses, had died peacefully in his sleep. But the enemies Costello had left behind were still unforgiving, and almost a year after his death a dynamite charge had leveled his tomb.

He gave Pitts an appreciative nod, his eyes softer now. “You’re not half-bad, Ollie. A pain in the ass as a cop, but not too shabby a shrink.”

“I’ll send you a bill.”

“Just go stuff your face so we can get back to the office sometime today.”

Devlin’s office was on Broadway, around the corner from City Hall and two blocks from One Police Plaza, a brick-cubed headquarters building that overlooked the East River. Street cops, aware of the endless political machinations that went on inside, called the building the Puzzle Palace.

When the mayor had cajoled him back to the department, Devlin had insisted his new squad be housed outside headquarters or any police precinct. Howie Silver had understood. Politics ruled the department, and anyone who trod on the very private fiefdom of the police brass was quickly ground underfoot. And even the mayor-though treated with greater subtlety-was not immune. During his first year in office, Silver had found himself repeatedly boxed out of high-profile cases when the police brass had felt threatened. It was the reason he had opted for a special squad-one that would handle those cases at his direction and report only to him.

Back in his office, Devlin went through the phone messages that littered his desk. There were four from the chief of detectives and three each from the chief of organized crime and the commander of the Fifth Precinct, where the latest mob hit had taken place-all the bosses his squad had cut out of the investigation. There was also a message from the mayor. It was the only one that would get a response.

Sharon Levy sat across from Devlin, a tall, shapely, beautiful redhead who made men’s heads turn when she entered a room, and whose sexual orientation had made her anathema to the bosses of the Puzzle Palace. She was also a gutsy, no-nonsense cop, and Devlin had made her his second in command despite howls of protest from One Police Plaza.

“We’ve got zip,” Levy said. “Little Italy is loaded with monkeys, all doing a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil bit. This thing won’t end until the Columbo family nails Rossi, or until the price gets too high to keep trying.”

“So let’s up the ante,” Devlin said. “Pull in a half-dozen gold shields from the Fifth, and a half dozen from the Seven-eight. Use the mayor as your authority. You know the drill. I want the Fifth Precinct guys to work Little Italy. The Seven-eight Precinct dicks will handle Brooklyn. Their only job will be to roust every Columbo and Rossi hood who sticks his nose out of his cave. I want every bookie, every numbers runner, every strong-arm punk dragged in. We find a betting slip, we bust everybody in sight. We find a weapon, we lock up every wiseguy within fifty yards of it. We find stolen furs in a back room, the whole building goes to jail. And I don’t care if every arrest we make gets thrown out of court, because as soon as they walk out the door, we’ll bust them again.”

“Hit ‘em in their wallets.”

“Until the pigskin squeals.”

“I like it. It’ll get their attention.”

“Yes, it will.”

Devlin noted the skepticism on her face. “I see a but in your eyes.”

“It’s more an unless. ” She gave him a small shrug. “Unless they want Rossi so bad, they don’t care what it costs.”

Devlin thought that over. It was possible. It could also explain why the Gambino family, still run from prison by Rossi’s nephew, was standing on the sidelines. He gave Sharon a quizzical look. “What the hell could that old bastard have done?”

The telephone interrupted them before Levy could answer. Devlin expected to hear Howie Silver’s growling baritone, demanding to know why his call hadn’t been returned. Instead, the anguished voice of his lover, Adrianna Mendez, came across awash in sobs. Rossi’s threats immediately returned, pushed away only after he was certain that neither she nor his daughter, Phillipa. had been hurt.